Reuse and Recycling through 2005

This page contains materials that shows how much electronic scrap (i.e. e-scrap) we've recycled throughout the years, as well as approximately how many systems, monitors, and printers we've reused and recycled in sum.

E-Scrap Recovery Rates

Tons of material recycled by year, broken down by type.

Click on the chart to make it larger.

The raw data from the chart (numbers are in tons):

Year	Mixed	Monitors	Steel	Copper- Bearing	Plastic	Gold- Bearing	Other Non- Ferrous	Total Tonnage
2000	2.22	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.22
2001	59.92	11.13	0	0	0	2.74	0	73.79
2002	20.68	32.78	24.45	6.86	2.14	2.78	0	89.69
2003	40.31	22.50	40.33	19.44	8.92	6.66	0.68	138.84
2004	41.70	38.02	74.65	46.14	11.70	11.56	2.20	225.97
2005	46.20	126.90	140.30	71.70	16.60	13.80	2.20	417.70

Some clarifications about what comprises the items in some of the above categories:

Mixed

printers, keyboards, and otherwise whole components that are ground up to recover materials such as steel, plastic, etc. In the early days of 2000 and 2001 we used to huck whole computers into a box for recycling, starting in 2002 we began to break everything we could down into the materials listed below.

Copper-Bearing Material

an item from which we can salvage some copper, generally from a small motor or wiring buried in its workings. Mice, stereos, telephones, and miscellaneous adapters go in this category.

Gold-Bearing Material

processors, memory, and circuit boards are included in this category.

Some fun, additional stats for you:

• Over the life of the organization through 2005, Free Geek recycled, or "recovered", 948.21 tons of e-scrap.
• In the year 2005, Free Geek recycled about the same amount of steel as it had recycled during all of the previous 4 years combined.
• At the end of 2005, Free Geek was recycling over 35 tons per month through its facility.

Overall Rates of Reuse and Recycling

Total reuse and recycling rates for systems, monitors, and printers.

Click on the chart to the right to enlarge it.

Here's the raw data from the chart:

	Gizmos Reused	Gizmos Recycled	Gizmos Received	Total
Systems	7,029	25,582	17,069	49,680
Monitors	6,998	19,625	8,408	35,031
Printers	3,342	11,471	8,045	22,858

It's good to note that, in theory, the "Gizmos Received" numbers should be the amounts of these items we have in storage at our facility. This hardly seems feasable, though: we just don't have this much room! More likely, the high numbers of "Gizmos Received" are probably the result of faulty tracking or mis-recorded data entry at many points throughout the life of the organization.

Please use the above numbers all ball-park figures. From them, we can say that approximately 20% of the computers, systems, and monitors we receive are reused. The rest are recycled or still on the premises at Free Geek.

• Next, Income and Expenses through 2005
• Back to the 2005 Annual Report index